Privacy in Belgium

Discussions secrètes » pour mettre un terme aux téléchargements illégaux dans l'UE

Discussions secrètes » pour mettre un terme aux téléchargements illégaux dans l'UE

Décidément le rôle de la commission européenne face aux téléchargements illégaux semble assez confus. on parle de discussions secrètes...

EU rules on eCommerce 'counter-productive' | EurActiv

EU rules on eCommerce 'counter-productive' | EurActiv.

European Commission plans security breach notification law

The European Commission wants laws to be passed across Europe that would force telecoms companies to tell customers when personal data security has been breached. Security breach laws are common in the US but are still controversial. This directive is a part of a huge shake-up of the telecom regulations by the commission.

Even in the wake of the loss of 25 million UK residents' personal details last month the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) cautioned that a poorly-drafted general security breach notification law would be counter-productive because a large number of notifications could make citizens complacent.

The Commission has published a proposal to amend the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive, which is designed to ensure that EU citizens' privacy is not violated in telecoms networks.

A major proposal is that telecoms companies would be subject to a security breach notification law which would force them to tell customers when a privacy breach had occurred.

Our comment: For the moment the EU citizens have nearly no information about data thefts compared to their US counterparts. This proposal, will force the telecom market to invest in security in order to reduce the risk of privacy breach and to communicate about these events. But for the moment it is only for telecom companies. Why not for all and every data holder?

More information about the various positions about the new telecom package on euractiv and outlaw

GOOGLE - EU FIGHT OVER DATA PRIVACY

Google was subject to pressure from the EU authorities to modify its privacy policies. The Article 27 Working Party (the EU data protection watchdog) issued a letter to Google on the 30/5/2007 critisizing the way Google was collecting data, based on its resolution on privacy protection and search engines dated november 26, 2006. Google considered that they have to keep user data for 24 months due to Data retention Directive. As far as the EU authorities consider that this directive is not applicable for search engines, Google, which is criticized by Privacy International that placed google at the bottom of its ranking of the worst privacy behaviour,  finally decided to reduce data retention to 18 months but if any country legislation requires a longuer period Google will adapt its privacy policy.

Our Comment: This Google story undermines the complexity of the data privacy regulation in an international environment, based on a mix of national laws that are sometimes contradictory. This is not the end of the story, stay tuned...

EU questions US over new air data system

The European Union has sent a letter asking US authorities to clarify how its new traveller security-screening system will use data on European citizens, with senior officials expressing concern it might violate an EU-US deal on data-protection.
full story

Our comment: it seems that data protection and the data handled in the framework of air trips to USA is a never-ending story

International Agreement on transfer of Passenger Name Records (PNR)

The EU Commission published today the text of the agreement between EU and US about airline passenger data transfer

ICC tries to standadize data protection in EU

Companies transferring personal data, such as lists of employees or customers, outside the European Union must comply with stringent European legal restrictions. To help businesses demonstrate their compliance, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has taken the initiative to standardize the process across all 25 EU countries.

The ICC has produced a form which it hopes will become a standard across all member states. It awaits approval by EU data protection authority the EC Article 29 Data Protection Working Party.

More info on ICC web site:

http://www.iccwbo.org/icciggb/index.html

the proposed standard document:

http://www.iccwbo.org/uploadedFiles/ICC/policy/e-business/pages/Standard_Application_for_Approval_of_BCRs.pdf